


Downpour

by feyrelay



Series: DIEU (Daddy Issues Extended Universe) [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Illnesses, Kansas, M/M, Mechanic Tony Stark, Sneaking Around
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 13:09:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19173949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: This is an AU set inside the world of Peter's wet dream from Chapter 7 of I know that you got daddy issues (and I do too).Feat. Kansas!tinkerer/mechanic!Tony Stark and 15-year-old nobody Peter Parker.





	Downpour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theheartchoice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheartchoice/gifts).



Peter wakes on a slow stretch, wriggling his toes in unfamiliar sheets. They’re not _the nicest_ he’s ever slept on, or anything; his Uncle Ben, a regional buyer and district manager for Autozone, had taken him and May on some nice vacations, when he was still alive. Those hotel sheets had probably had a higher whatchamacallit… thread count.

He still feels really, really good, though.

It lasts for about a second, lingering like his yawn, and then _oh shit_ , Peter has the presence of mind to check the time and _May is going to murder him_.

Also—and this is the part that _really_ scares him—Tony isn’t there. A palm-press to the other side of the bed confirms his suspicions—it’s cold—and Peter peels a sliver of feeling away from his panic to be angry that Tony had apparently left him in his bed to sleep for at least the past hour.

In a rush, Peter puts his clothes back on, cheeks blooming with shame. It’s stupid; he hadn’t had any trouble taking them _off_ , certainly. This feeling sort of wrecks everything, sets off a symphony of discordant notes in his mental soundtrack, but Peter doesn’t really have time to think about it.

He’s not trying to be quiet on his way down the ugly, carpeted stairs. It’s just a consequence of the ubiquitously-brown, medium-pile slipping by under his sock feet. Peter figures either Tony is still at home or he isn’t. Either way, he doesn’t have to sneak around.

He’s not expecting his Aunt May to be seated at the press-board table in the kitchen, steaming mug of tea untouched in front of her.

“There he is!” Tony booms, too loud for the quiet morning after a storm. “See, May? Right as rain.”

Peter holds still for an interminable moment, as if pinned under glass. “Good morning, Mr. Stark, Aunt May,” he manages politely, though his voice comes out soft and his lips barely move.

May’s eyes are on his hastily pulled-on t-shirt. He refuses to look down at it, knows it would reflect guilt straight up into his face if he did. He tilts his head and tries to feel without seeing and  _oh_ -

It’s inside out. He can tell from the seams.

Tony claps a hand to his shoulder, pressing the tell-tale stitching into his skin, and says, “Sorry I didn’t have anything clean for you to borrow, but I figured you were so worn out, you wouldn’t mind just doing the old switcheroo to sleep in.”

Peter keeps his face even and open and as innocent as possible to say, “Yeah, well, if you turn it inside-out, it’s clean, right?”

Aunt May takes the bait, easy and practiced in her feminine disgust, “Ugh, young man, don’t ever say that in my earshot again, got it? As if Mr. Stark wants you wearing your sweaty shirt in his guest bed. Don’t make more chores for the man, Peter; I raised you better than that.”

Peter tries not to breathe relief into his faux-chastised reply. “Of course, sorry, sir. I, um, I also stole a pair of your socks since mine were down here, still. I’ll wash ‘em and bring ‘em back next time we work on the project car. If, uh, if that’s alright?”

Aunt May throws up her hands, but is thankfully, unsuspicious. “You took your shoes and socks off in the kitchen? _Peter_.”

“It’s alright, May,” Tony cuts in. “I was a fifteen-year-old boy once, too, you know.”

May smiles and finally, _finally_ takes a sip of her tea. The tag flutters at the side; the bag is still in.

Peter goes for broke and pipes up, “Yeah, but that was such a long, long, _long_ time ago.”

He’s not sure what it means that Tony smiles.

***

May chivvies him out of Tony’s house and down the driveway, citing chores she had meant for him to do and remarking loudly that just because she’d found him at the first place she’d looked for him, Peter was far from in the clear for staying over without calling.

At the last second, just as he and May are about to step off light gray concrete onto darker, already-warming asphalt, Tony calls, “Wait, Pete, don’t you need your backpack and everything for school this week?”

“Oh, yeah! May, listen, I promise I’ll come right home, just let me get my stuff packed up. You go on before it gets any hotter out here.”

She blows a lock of auburn hair away from her glasses, seeming annoyed. “Peter, I swear to god, you would live here if I let you. No tinkering! Come straight home. Stark, if it gets above 90, you’d better drive him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they both say. Peter looks straight up at the sun to keep from looking at Tony.

May climbs into her old beater as Peter makes his way back up the driveway. They don’t go back inside until she’s around the corner. She takes a long time at a stop sign, looking both ways quite a few times. She does that now, after Ben.

“S’gonna need rear brakes soon, I guess,” Peter mentions, just to have something to say.

“Oh yeah? Disc or drum?” Tony inquires, presumably for the same reason.

It makes Peter a little mad, to be honest. As if Tony doesn’t know everything there is to know about May’s car, as if that isn’t how they met. As if, after the accident, Peter hadn’t needed the friendly neighborhood mechanic to assure him ten ways to Sunday that May’s old Dodge was the cleanest, most well-maintained hunk-of-junk on the road in the town of Leavenworth, Kansas.

“You know they’re drum brakes. You _know_ ,” he says helplessly. “We put them on, together.”

“I don’t know what I know, anymore,” Tony sighs as they head back in. Peter collects his notebooks and tools quietly, thinking.

Finally, he asks in the only way he can think of. “Should I leave my soldering stuff here?”

“What?”

Peter huffs, wondering if sex made Tony stupid. “Should I leave my soldering stuff here, for next time? I don’t use it for school stuff, not really. Only for components for our self-driving car stuff. Auto shop, I basically just adjust carburetor jets and crap like that.”

Tony comes up behind him, gently encouraging him to drop the soldering tools on the workbench. Peter tries not to shiver, tries not to get worked up by the sheer, electric intimacy of it all; that’s what started this problem in the first place. “Are you asking me if you’re gonna be allowed to come back to the garage?”

Peter swallows and nods. He wonders if, this close, Tony can hear the vertebrae in his neck pop.

“Kid, I did promise I wouldn’t hold this place hostage, didn’t I?” Tony murmurs before stepping back. He sounds a little hurt.

Peter finishes zipping his bag closed and then turns to face him. “Yeah, but I thought you meant you wouldn’t do anything like that if things went wrong, not if they went right.”

Tony rubs at his chin and silly goatee. He scratches a bit, like he’s just… tired. “Honestly, Peter, I don’t know if it _did_ go right. None of this is… ‘right’? You get that?”

“I get that,” Peter promises, but stops. He adjusts the straps of his backpack before lifting it from the workbench without turning around. He needs the weight on his back to have the balls to say what he’s about to say. “But it’s not _that_ bad, right? The age of consent in Kansas is only sixteen. My birthday’s in August, we could-”

“Christ, did you _Google_ that? I can’t have this conversation with you, right now. You could be sixteen, seventeen, hell, twenty even, twenty-five, and this would still be beyond the pale.”

Peter twists his mouth and tries not to be offended. “What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t matter what age you are; you’re right, I _do_ know that your aunt has rear drum brakes. You’re right, we checked them together. And the filters, and the hoses, and the lines, and the belt, and the fluids, and so on and so on. And do you remember _why_?”

His backpack hits the concrete floor of the garage near Tony’s bare foot. Peter is so, _so_ angry. “Of course I remember why! Do you think I could ever _forget_?! Huh? Do you think I don’t dream about telling Ben I’d checked the brakes when I hadn’t? That I wish I hadn’t assumed he’d be able to tell if they were okay or not and do it himself?”

Peter emphasizes each question in his rant with a finger in Tony’s chest, until the older man grabs at his hand and holds it still, soothing his own thumb over Peter’s recently-white knuckles.

He waits for Peter’s breathing to steady and asks gently, “Do you think this is what he’d have wanted for you? To be preyed upon by the person who was supposed to be helping you with your grief and your anxieties? It’s an abuse of trust, and I should _never_ have-”

“ _Don’t_. Just, don’t, Tony. Please, don’t say you regret it. I don’t need that right now, can we just-”

“I don’t think we can, Peter.”

“Why are you _doing_ this- I, I. What did I do _wrong_?” Peter manages. He really doesn’t want to cry. That would just be too pathetic. His throat burns with the effort.

“Honey, you didn’t do anything wrong, but you _are_ proving my point here, a bit. This is 0% your fault, okay? It’s 100% mine. But, you don’t know how to be in a relationship, okay? It. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you feel for someone, if one or both of you just isn’t ready. Trust me. It’s not about doing anything wrong or doing everything right, it’s just. Not time for you yet. I shouldn’t have… allowed you to be rushed.”

Peter takes that in with long, deep breaths. He tries not to snuggle into Tony’s chest, but it’s a struggle. “Did you rush me, or did I rush myself?” he asks.

Tony passes a hand over Peter’s hair, barely petting it. Peter pulls back at the light touch. He watches Tony’s face.

“Kid, I’ll let you know when I figure that out.”

***

Emotionally spent, Peter declines a lift home. Instead, he takes the time to clear his head, walking out of Tony’s cookie-cutter subdivision via the long way, then cutting through a few fields to make up for lost time before heading into the woods.

It starts to get cloudy as he heads into the thicker part of the trees, and he has trouble distinguishing west from northwest. He’d use his phone, but he’s out of data for the month.

Peter ends up getting spit out of the woods near Fort Leavenworth Military Medical Center, which at least re-orients him. He knows how to get home from here, and he avoids the complex itself, setting off in a more north-trending direction. It’s cooler in the woods, anyway, away from the sun. There are, however, a number of overturned or ripped-out trees this way. The storm must have been worse than he thought, last night.

There are _too_ many, really, and Peter doesn’t really want to walk around them, so he clambers over the large trunks. He doesn’t want to get off-course again, anyway. May will be extra mad if she thinks he hung around Tony’s for too long.

Of course, it’s all well and good until he gets bit by a honking huge fucking spider.

It bites right into his hand, planted on a tree trunk that he was about to vault over, and Peter swears. It _burns_.

He immediately slams it with his backpack, crushing it. Yeah, he’ll have to wash his backpack, but it’s worth it to know that thing is definitely dead.

Peter scurries home even faster after that, aware that he needs to be in civilization just in case that thing was poisonous. Peter’s no biologist, but he’s aware that brightly-colored things in nature have a tendency to be _no bueno_ for humans.

And the damned thing had been bright red and blue, of all colors.


End file.
